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Out of the Barn and Into the Snifter

A 15-YEAR WAIT Marc Darroze and his father, Francis, sell Armagnac.Credit
Rodolphe Escher for The New York Times

Roquefort, France

ARMAGNAC is often overlooked as cognac’s rustic relative. It’s imported to the United States in minute quantities — 101,000 bottles last year against cognac’s more than 50 million.

If you have heard of it at all it is probably because of the work of a single Gascon family who grow no grapes, make no wine, and distill no spirit. The Darrozes — Francis, his son, Marc, and his daughter, Hélène — are from a long line of chefs whose restaurant in Villeneuve-de-Marsan was, for almost half a century until it closed in 1999, the place to go for traditional southwestern French cuisine. (Hélène continues the culinary tradition both at the Parisian restaurant that bears her name, and two Michelin stars, and the new Toustem on the Left Bank.)

In Gascony, every grand meal ends with a glass of Armagnac, and it was for his own guests that Francis first began to seek out the best barrels stashed away in the barns of the local farmers.

In that era, after World War II, with scattered, small producers and no organized market, Armagnac remained a local phenomenon from a region far off the beaten track, a province of, as the joke goes, 150,000 people and 4 million ducks.

That quest for a few barrels grew over time into a business that today, with Marc at the helm, markets more vintages from more properties than any other négociant. They sell the products of 30 different small domaines, as the farmsteads are called in Gascony, with 35 vintages from 1904 to 1996, an accomplishment that led the wine writer Robert M. Parker Jr. to call Francis Darroze “the pope of Armagnac.”

In their airy post-and-beam tasting room in the village of Roquefort, 420 miles south-southwest of Paris, last fall, Francis, 76, and Marc, 38, related their story and the story of Armagnac, one of France’s oldest distilled spirits.

“If you were a peasant farmer, you didn’t sell your Armagnac,” Marc said, “and certainly not every year. You kept it for the bad days — if you had a daughter to marry, a barn to re-roof, a tractor to buy. Then you sold a barrel or two. It was a savings account in a cask.”

Francis added, groaning, “And those large Gascon farm families, there was always one brother who didn’t want to sell it to me.”

Though the Darrozes have been buying Armagnac from some families for more than a generation now, Marc still goes out hunting in the country.

One recent adventure brought him to a poorly lighted, frigid barn miles from the nearest village, where a dozen or so age-blackened barrels waited for his judgment. He used a thin hose to siphon samples one by one into a snifter, tasted and spat, all the while exchanging quiet words with an old farmer who was standing in for the owner, who was on his deathbed.

Photo

The Armagnac is made by farmers like Marc Tarbes, above, in Gascony.Credit
Rodolphe Escher for The New York Times

Later, he said that situation was typical of Armagnac these days, a generation passing with no one to take its place.

The owner was an elderly bachelor, a farmer with some vines, a herd of cows, a few fields of corn. He had been distilling his wine and aging his own Armagnac for 50 years, like his father before him. Too ill to trust his own senses, he had asked Marc to taste his Armagnacs for him, a humbling admission for one who had been watching over the family’s barrels since youth. He needed Marc to help him decide which barrels were at their peak of maturity and thus needed to be poured off into glass carboys, where they would age no further.

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This respect you can see on the label of every bottle the Darrozes sell. The family brand — Bas Armagnac Francis Darroze — is at the top; below is the name of the domaine of origin and vintage.

Since the early ’80s, Francis has seen a troubling trend: the younger generation lacked the patience for Armagnac. Producing good Armagnac can take at least 15 years. The wine is distilled into a white eau-de-vie, which is aged in new oak barrels for 18 months to two years. Then it’s transferred to old oak barrels, which are porous, allowing alcohol to evaporate, reducing the proof from 110 to about 80. The barrels also permit the slow infiltration of oxygen, which mellows the spirit as the wood contributes its amber color and tannins, lending complexity of taste.

“If Cognac is feminine,” Marc said, “Armagnac is masculine, dense, powerful, individualistic, reeking of terroir.” He meant not that it tastes rough or raw, but that its origins are earthier, more present in the glass than in its counterpart.

Many négociants buy up young Armagnacs in bulk for nonvintage blends, diluted to the legal minimum of 80 proof.

Marc’s relationship with the Tarbes family of Lannemaignan is typical of the way they work with their producers. He has been buying the Tarbes’s eau-de-vie for almost a decade. They agree to follow his advice in growing their grapes, down to their pruning, yield, even what varieties to plant. A trained oenologist, he oversees the winemaking and distilling, which always takes place on the farmers’ properties, “because you wouldn’t want your child born at the neighbor’s house, would you?” he said.

After spirits are poured into new oak barrels, they are brought to the Darroze aging barn, where 500 barrels sleep. The family has a vast stock, less than half of which they judge ready to sell.

“There is not, for sure, a huge market for our Armagnacs,” Francis said. “But for the highest quality, there is a small clientele. That was our purpose, not to produce huge quantities for the masses, but to nourish the connoisseurs.”

He gestured at the shelves holding the many vintages which together represented a half century’s work.

“These are Armagnacs of terroir,” he said. “Yes, they’re rustic, rather than flowery or flattering or easy. And with these Armagnacs, too — it may sound silly, but there’s something to talk about. That’s why it’s intriguing to me.”